Doug Dorst

“-It's extremely cool how the words can stay the same but their meaning can change.-Because the reader changes.-EXACTLY”

“Do you always travel with such cumbersome books?''I don't trust anyone who wouldn't.”

“Something about her in this moment strikes him as being familiar. The motion of her arm? The shape of her hand? The wrinkle of her upper lip? He does not know. Nor does he have any way to tell whether what he is sensing is a fragment of memory, a fragment of an idea of a memory, or something his mind, desperate for connections, has created on its own.”

“What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin. Words are a gift to the dead and a warning to the living.”

“The creation of art requires descent into the dark.”

“I know the you who’s in the margins. I know you’re thinking hard about what you want and why– more than some people ever do. I know you can take on a challenge and kick its ass. And I know you’ve tried harder to understand me than anyone has in a long time.”

“You might say that S. has only himself to blame, that it is entirely his choice to fight this fight, to live a life of vigilant somnolence or somnolent vigilantism, to allow himself to be satisfied with Sola in the margins of his manuscripts instead of in his arms, and you might be right. But you ought to understand, too, that there's an attrition that takes place inside, one in which options and choices and even desires are ground ever smaller until finally their existence can no longer be confirmed by observation or weight or displacement but only by faith. Until desire is a ghost.”

“-That's kind of sad.-I used to think so. Now I think: you're born a certain way. Later you get to decide how much you want to fight/change that. I don't mind being alone.-You must mind. If you didn't you wouldn't be doing this with me.”

“If I am going out into the unknown, it might as well be the really unknown.”

“It dawned on him that he really could be a cop if he wanted to, and it dawned on him that he'd had this revelation while eating a donut, and it that wasn't a sign, he didn't know what was.”